by
Brian Madden
Think you know everything about Windows 2003 Terminal Server licensing? I though I did until I talked with some Microsoft folks last week. Several Terminal Server product managers, engineers, and developers made themselves available via a chat last week to answer questions about licensing. I took the opportunity to ask several questions, and they did a fantastic job with the answers. I learned a lot, and some of their answers surprised me. Here are my questions and their answers:
Q: How long will an unactivated license server give out temporary CALs for? (i.e. I know that the temps are good for 90 days. But how long will a license server hand out temps before it must be activated?) My testing seems to show 120 days. Can you confirm?
A: A License Server can remain inactive as long as you want. It does not have to be activated within 120 days.
Q: We know that license servers notify other license servers when CALs are added or removed in some situations (Domain within domain, Ent within site, From ent to domain, From 2k to 2003). Under what situations is this information used?
A: When you have multiple license servers, any requests that come in for a CAL type that isn't available locally will be forwarded to a license server that does have that CAL .
Q: What happens if a client presents an expired temp TS CAL to a Terminal Server, and that Terminal Server's license server has no CALs. Will the license server pull a CAL from another license server? Will the TS try another license server from its cache? Or is the client connection refused?
A: The License server that originally issued the license will forward the request to another license server that it has identified as having the requested license version. The expired license will be renewed with the new license server as the issuer
Q: When a Terminal Server is configured for "per user" licensing, if a client connects with a valid TS "Device" CAL, will that always be accepted? (i.e. will that always cause the TS not to request a TS "user" CAL?)
A: "Per User" licensing mode is not managed at this time. As long as the Terminal server has discovered a license server, client connections will be allowed independent of whether the client has a license or not.
Q: Follow up: Just to be clear, a "per user" mode Terminal Server does not have any communication whatsoever with the License Serv other than validating that one exists? Does it need a find an activated license serv, or will any one do?
A: Correct, the Terminal server will not communicate with the License server once it has discovered it. It does not matter if the license server is activated.
Q: Follow up 2: Is the External Connector License (ECL) also non-managed in the same way as a per-user TS?
A: Yes. If you want to use ECL, you should set the TS to Per User licensing. You'll still a license server available, as with Per User.
Q: How does "per user" licensing mode affect the integrity of the technical enforcement of license compliance? i.e. couldn't a rogue admin simply set their Terminal Servers to "per user" mode and then not deal with installing licenses?
A: Yes, you're in the same situation as Windows Server CALs: the honor system (and audits) are all that stop you from non-compliance.
Q: Any future plans to manage per-user licenses?
A: Yes there is plans to support this in a future release
Q: Why does Microsoft build the technical compliance infrastructure of a license server if it can be so easily circumvented by setting a Terminal Server to "per user" licensing?
A: During the beta, we built support for "Per-CPU" licensing. At the last minute, we realized that Per User was better for our customers, but didn't have time to build technical compliance infrastructure.
Q: Any other plans for future licensing technical components you care to share today?
A: At this time all we can say is that we will continue to improve monitoring and management of licensing.
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